Lonres reports that:
“Sales volumes across prime London fell by 19.9% in Q3 compared to the same period last year. Relative to the 2017 to 2019 third quarter average, transactions were down by 10.8%.
The equivalent figures for the £5m+ market show an annual change of -26.1% in Q3 but growth relative to the longer-term average of 6.0%.”
Frankly, none of this is surprising considering the amount of uncertainty caused by the woeful leaking of PROPOSED tax changes to the property market. The rampant speculation would cause any market to judder to a halt.
How the government expects to see growth in such an unstable environment is quite beyond me. By 26th November, they will have been in power for 16 months and we will have spent seven of those months waiting for two Budgets that we were told in advance were going to be dire.
Consequently, the news has been unremittingly bad focusing on stories about mansion taxes, wealth taxes, Capital Gains Tax on Primary Residences, etc, etc. You could be forgiven for thinking that they will try to tax every breath you take.
Unsurprisingly, I have received numerous calls and emails asking me what I think will happen. So, I will refer you to a much smarter person than me (and, no, you don’t need to write in to tell me that this is a low bar to get over…).
Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, has previously said:
“My point is simply that it is frequently the case that those in the media throw around biased opinions stated as facts that lead to damaging judgements by the public. This is very bad.”
No-one, not even Rachel Reeves herself, knows what she is going to do yet.
I could give you my thoughts on what she will do but it would merely be speculation just like everything else you are hearing. So, to save yourself a lot of unnecessary wasted time and stress, I would ignore everything you hear until it comes from the horse’s mouth.
